Conclusion: A lack of pants for a mascot is not what makes the mascot creepy or horrifying. There are other factors. Clark is probably going to be lame, just like 90 to 95 percent of all mascots. But his bear bottom, pun absolutely intended, does not make him automatically creepy.

Clark’s sad, worried eyes make you uncomfortable, sure. But that’s probably not because he’s not wearing pants.

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I got into baseball when Bobby Valentine was the Mets' manager, so I assumed that they'd intentionally made Mr. Met look like him, like they wanted to have a walking baseball man version of Bobby V. as their mascot. I wasn't a fan, but it turns out that Mr. Met looked like that even before Valentine got there.

When I was in college, we had a secondary mascot we brought out for basketball and volleyball games: Ollie Gator. He was a big balloon alligator, and he would lurch around the court in some grim simulacrum of normal locomotion. His big trick was repeatedly slamming his over-inflated head on the floor.

everyone hates the Moose. The Moose could have gone out on the field before the game and, with props and charts, provided a provable grand unification theory, and we'd have gone after him with advanced theoretical arguments about the ultimately unknowable nature of the universe and his unfitness to be a member of same.

[best part clipped]

We were all horrified, except for Dave, who turned a salmon pink and batted ineffectually at the Moose while protesting incoherently. The rest of us laughed, but in the awful laugh of the terrified, as we screamed 'No!' 'Stop!'. Then the Moose passed on to the aisle, leaving Dave shocked, the rest of us scared and unable to get a full sentence out, and an entire section of baffled, vaguely offended fans around us.

Youppi has fallen on hard times, and now has to pay the electric bill by making frat boys happy. Don't judge, until you've walked 1.60934 kilometers in his comically large shoes.

Here's what Youppi! is up to these days. Most kids probably don't even know he was the Expo mascot before moving on to the NHL... I'm guessing it's the only mascot who was employed by two different teams in two different leagues for two different sports.

[Edit to add that I really like this piece of trivia (I remember that game very well too!):

Youppi! was the first mascot to be thrown out of a Major League Baseball game: On August 23, 1989, in the 11th inning, while atop the visitors' dugout, Youppi! took a running leap, landing hard and noisily on its roof, and then snuck into a front row seat. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda complained to the umpires and Youppi! was ejected, though he later returned, confined to the home team's dugout roof, as Montreal eventually lost 1-0 in 22 innings.